


And This Is How The World Changes Us

by Zagzagael



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S4.15 - a quick glimpse into Daryl's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He had never felt so alone before. And that was the gist of the issue, how he _felt._ He had been brutally alone before, had spent his life isolating himself, seeking out the loneliest place he could fit himself into. As a child, all scabby knees and boney elbows. As a boy, keeping his head down, fingers laced over the back of his neck. The young man who wouldn’t turn bared teeth on the bastard who had fathered him, instead standing his ground just to have it knocked out from beneath him. His daddy wore himself out, belt and fists and boots, until he had only dull and dangerous words left to hurt with. And it was those that worked him over best, leaving scars on the part of him that wasn’t made flesh and bone. 

But he couldn't remember ever feeling his aloneness was loneliness. And he knew damned well that he had never in all his life felt that if he was _alone_ now then he must have been _together_ before now. Together with her. 

On his back on the cement floor of the garage, wrist over his eyes, surrounded by these men he didn’t know and did not trust, he couldn’t hold the memory of her at bay anymore. He had tried to defend himself from the images that continued to rise to the surface of his consciousness, holding him accountable for his feelings. His desires. His longings, and his regrets. He needed to find her. Alive or dead or undead. His world had become her.

He had had the breath knocked out of him plenty of times before, but never had he emptied his lungs with just a thought. _Beth._ Her smile, the eyes he could not tear himself away from, her singing, the way in which her baby fat was stripping off her bones and revealing the invincibility of her womanhood beneath, her hand in his hand.

He could not breathe through the memories and the worries. He had chewed the cuticles off every nail bed, emptied his stomach of all its acid behind countless bushes and trees, pressed the heel of his hand hard enough to bruise against the frantic battering of his heart. 

He had never felt so lost before. And he knew he was well and truly forsaken. She had become his compass point, his center, the vortex into which he was being pulled. For the first time since the turning, he thought it might just not be worth the effort anymore. Not if he had to make it without her. Last man standing be fucked and damned. There was no point staying on his feet if she wasn’t standing beside him. 

He felt the need to retch twist up his insides again. And he welcomed it. He wanted to feel how empty he was becoming. Hollowed out. It made it easier to put one foot in front of the other and keep up with these men. The trail had gone cold. He knew he had tracked the funeral car in every possible direction it could have gone. If Beth’s abductor had been on foot or even on beast, he would be nothing but gristle on the ground now. It was a near impossible thing for him to admit this defeat and he could only face his failure by giving himself a kind of dark destined deadline. If he didn’t stumble upon fresh tracks in seven days’ time, he would either stop walking and give himself over to the deadly teeth or he would step up into the ranks of these men he found despicable and become what he promised her he would put away. He would no longer remember how far he’d come, he would open that box and let all his demons out.


	2. Chapter 2

So, on the third day, making their way down the train tracks to only the devil knew where, the day the group had slain one of their own and he’d had to wrestle with himself about respecting the dead, listening with an aching aching heart to Beth’s plaintive voice inside his head, he realized he had made a mistake. Beth had not been abducted and driven away, and that’s where his thinking had gone wrong. Beth was in the funeral home. He never thought to circle back because he was so bound and determined to simply accept that another thing he wanted had been denied him, he knew he deserved next to nothing and when he got nothing he made it work. 

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned this over in his mind. He was walking away from the only thing that had ever promised him something and walking into an unknown that would not ever be able to offer him what she had come so close to giving. 

He knew he couldn’t just turn and walk away from the group. They had shown their ruthlessness and Joe had all but slavered over the crossbow. He wouldn’t put it past Joe to “claim” the putting of a bullet into the back of his head. He would have to ditch them on the sly, make his way to a road and find a car that still had enough gasoline to take him back four days in time. For the first moment in days he could breathe again without feeling that his heart was being torn into smaller and smaller pieces. He smiled and bit his lower lip until it hurt like hell and he nodded to himself. 

When they made camp, he took the second watch, when everyone was battling their own dream demons, and felt a twinge of guilt about moving on silent feet further and further away from the sleeping men until the night opened her arms and pulled him fast and safe into the darkness. He began to run. 

***

The fourth car he stumbled upon in the dark had gas. No keys and he was ready to hotwire it until he took a breather, sitting in the front seat and thought it through. Sure enough he found the keys in a pile of clothing and blood stains on the tarmac. Black on black in the light from his mag. He took it as a sign. And although he knew better he could not help but stomp on the accelerator pedal and nearly shouted with relief when the car jumped out from beneath him, all steel steed running into the fray no longer away from it. He pressed his chest against the steering wheel, and urged the car onward. To Beth.

He drove.

***

His sense of direction wasn’t as honed in a vehicle as on the ground. He had the window rolled open and had to slow down to insure himself at crossroads and ruined highways that he was heading the right way. He had forgotten the efficiency of a car, or a motorcycle. The world had slowed down and yet life had sped up. And death had become never-ending. It was all too overwhelming to think on long. The night was pitched, a waxing moon was hanging in the sky, but her light was filtering through the lace of clouds. 

At one crossroads, he stopped the car in the middle of the four choices and had to close his eyes and let the trail back to the funeral home, to Beth, spoke out from the hub of his mind. Trying to remember the road he had run after her and the car on, the turns, the tire tracks he’d followed until he couldn’t follow any longer. In order to place the cemetery on the map he had to think of the prison and the widening circles he and Beth had circumnavigated around it. He breathed out, the air warm and heavy inside the car. He screwed his eyes shut even tighter, counting back over the days and nights he and Beth had spent together. Then he turned and drove slowly. Up ahead he saw a ruined sign indicating the golf course and he whooped out loud. He was on the right track and he was close. 

***

Landmarks that loomed like nightmares in the night. He did a three-point turn in the middle of the road and pointed the nose of the car back the way he came, parking it in the middle of the ruined pavement. He took a deep breath and then climbed out, shouldering the crossbow, double-checking his knife, telling his heart to step the fuck off and let him focus. 

He began walking. At the top of the drive his heart sank as he recognized the car with the cross in the rear window. How could he have been so stupid. He crept closer and grew enraged by the shadows thrown by candles lit inside the house. He skirted a group of Walkers that were huddled around a boarded up window. Slowly he took one porch step at a time, refusing to remember how he had piggybacked her up to the front door. He cocked his head and listened. 

The door was banging in its jamb. With his shoulder he edged it open and the smell of blood hit him, a punch to the solar plexus that had him gulping air. No, no, no. He’d woken up that morning with the stench of living human blood in his nostrils. It was a night and day difference to the viscera of a Walker. He made himself take one careful step after another into the house, the crossbow cocked and loaded, sighting down the short length of it. He could feel the weight of his Bowie on his hip and it was a honed and deadly oath. 

Something had gone very wrong inside the house and it was a combination of the Walker herd that had attacked him and a newly fresh struggle. He looked into the viewing room with the piano and the coffin he’d laid himself out in. Empty. The viewing room across the hall with the made-up dead. Empty. The kitchen had streaks of blood smeared on the door, leading across the threshold. He kicked the door with one foot, exploding it backwards against the inside wall, and there was a body slumped on the linoleum between the upturned table and the cabinets. He checked the corners and then made his way over, squatting down and reassuring himself that this scarecrow of a man wasn’t his Beth. He pulled the body over by its shoulder.

“Good girl,” he whispered into the quiet of the room. The man had been gutted and then finished with a killing wound through the eye socket. He stood and in an uncharacteristic move spat on the face of the dead. 

He moved quickly through the rest of the house. It was devoid of life. Now. But it hadn’t been just hours before. He knew enough about the blackened hearts of men to figure out the ties on the bedposts upstairs, the padlock on the chain around the balustrade.

He found a pile of Beth’s clothes on the floor in the bedroom and winced. He stood for a long heart-like-a-hammer moment trying to use his hunter’s senses. Hard-won and he needed them now. He breathed out and began backtracking through the house.

Outside, the day was beginning to break, the rising sun whispering a promise to him that he wasn’t sure he deserved. He leapt, already running, off the porch, searching out the signs, her trail. And he found it quicker than he thought he would be able. He slung the crossbow behind his back and followed her footprints, perpendicular to the asphalt driveway, heading away from the house of horrors, heading towards where he had just come looking for her. 

Back and forth he wove, following, tracking. Nearly an hour and he knew he had passed the car by about ten minutes but her trail was fresh and he hadn’t been this filled with hope since the long minutes they had spent staring into one another’s eyes across the kitchen table. 

It was in the exposed roots of a champion oak that he found her curled around her knife, breathing shallowly, her eyes moving frantically behind her thin lids. She was nightmaring. He stood, simultaneously defeated and elated, before he hunkered down, watching her through the dirt and winding substratum of the magnificent tree in which she had found protection. She was as though an unborn babe and he looked closer and could see the tracks the tears had washed clean in the dirt on her face and he felt his heart punish him with this reality. Her fingers bruised, the broken ragged nails, the welts around her delicate wrists, the one that already bore a proud-fleshed scar. He covered his mouth with one hand, keeping his pain trapped inside his throat. The beautiful sunlit hair tangled, the neckline of a shirt he didn’t recognize torn, the slender ball of her shoulder poking through in such vulnerable exposure that he couldn’t wait another moment to pull her from her den and into his arms. 

“Beth?” he called low and felt his voice break on his teeth. 

Her eyes fluttered, then slitted open, and she looked at him. He could see that she didn’t believe the fact of him.

“Oh, Beth,” his voice cracked. 

Slowly her eyes widened and she began to see him. She lifted her head from off the dark loamy dirt beneath her cheek. “Daryl?” she asked him.

He nodded. “C'mere, baby girl.” He reached one hand down to her.

She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut, then opened them again. “Daryl,” she breathed out. “I was waitin’ for you.” She handed him her knife, he could see it stained with blood, red not black. He shoved it down into his boot and then with both hands pulled her through the tree roots and up to her feet. 

He had her hands in his, fingers closing over her knuckles. He brought her hands up to his face, kissing her fingertips. She smiled shyly at this and he sniffed hard, then exhaling, feeling that his knees might just buckle. Her grin broke wide and lit her entire face up the way he was used to. 

“I knew you’d find me.”

“I found you. You saved yourself. You done good.” And then his voice did break. “Oh, god Beth.” He pulled her into his arms, fast and tight against his body, her hands were trapped between them and she wriggled them loose and wrapped her arms around him, and buried her face in his neck.

“Are you crying?” they asked each other.

“Let’s get outta here,” he said into her hair, against her ear, but he made no move to let her go.


	3. Chapter 3

Finally, his hands on her shoulders, he willed himself to step out of the circle of her arms, away from her heat. And it was then that he really took in the reality of her. Barefooted, ripped blouse and a skirt. He could feel the shaking inside of her bones and that worried him far more than how inappropriately she was dressed. 

“What are you wearin’, girl?”

She ran both hands down the front of her body, and her lower lip began to tremble. “Daryl,” she whispered. 

“Alright, alright. It’s gonna be alright. Shhhh.” He still had her by her shoulders and he bent close to her face, shushing her through closed lips. “We gotta get outta here, right. I got us a car. So, let’s start hiking back that way. Can you walk?” He looked doubtfully at her filthy bleeding feet. The dark blue bruise marring the outside of her left ankle rocked him as he remembered the small trap she’d stepped into.

He watched her take one, two, three deep breaths, blow all the air out of her lungs and then nod. “Yes, I think so.”

He smiled crooked. “Stay right on me.” He reached down for the knife and handed it to her, he took her free hand and brought it up to the back of his vest and felt her fist the leather. “That’s right, that’s good. Here we go.”

He turned and began walking deliberate and slow through the morning-lit woods, back the way he’d run. The weight of her arm, her hand holding fast, tethered him to the earth while his heart soared high above their heads.

***

At the car, he helped her into the front seat and despaired as she collapsed boneless. The walk had taken more effort on her part than he had been realizing. He dug a bottle of water out of his pack and pressed it into her lap. She drank slowly. He stepped away from the car, one hand on the door, and looked far down the road, back in the direction of the funeral home. He shoved the edge of his thumb between his lips. _Don’t let this girl be broken,_ he prayed to her absent God on her behalf, _please don’t let her be broken._

He looked back down at her and she was looking up at him. He tried a smile but it felt pained. She smiled back at him, close-lipped but it was a good sign. He nodded and shut the door, walking around to the driver’s side. They were pointed in the wrong direction.

He started the car, and turned, putting his arm long across the back of the front bench seat. His fingers brushed up against the nape of her neck. He began backing up.

“I don’t wanta go back there,” she said softly but he could hear the panic rising.

“You took care of that problem,” he said gruff, approving.

She turned quickly, big eyes open, sucking her top lip between her teeth. 

“You done good, Beth. You done real good. Now listen up, we gotta go back there. We need your clothes or some kinda clothes. Ain’t gonna get far in what you got on now. We need gas if I can find it. And we should grab whatever food is there.”

“I can’t stay in the car?” 

He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s got them Walkers dumbed down but I’m bettin’ they’ll be inside by now.”

He slowed as they reached the manicured lawn rising from the funeral home up to the street. “I’m gonna take a chance and leave this idlin’. We just gotta move, Beth.” He looked at her from a narrowed gaze, he had to shove his hand under his thigh to keep the thumb out of his mouth. He was strung tighter than a possum on a trap line. 

She nodded, smoothing the wrecked hair out of her face. He looked past her, trying to see what was happening down the driveway. 

“Here’s how it’s gonna go. Get yer knife. Good. Upstairs, for your clothes. Kitchen for food.” He reached back over the seat and grabbed the black hefty bag, emptying it onto the floor and shaking it out. “Then you stand watch while I siphon all the gas I can outta that car. What the hell am I gonna put that into….okay, deal with that later. Ready?” 

She nodded. And he waited, not sure what he was waiting for, but then she smiled and he knew that was the fuel he needed. “Let’s go.”

They crouch-ran down the driveway, no Walkers in sight. He glanced at the car as they ran past, trying to figure out how he could siphon the gas without a hose. Then he saw an old garden hose coiled up against the house and filed it away in his mind. Up on the porch they could hear the Walkers inside, he held up a hand to her and she scooted to the far edge while he sidled himself through the doorway. Then he signaled her on. The door to the kitchen hung ruined on one hinge from where he had kicked it, and there was a small group of the undead working on the man Beth had knifed. They made quick order of them. He began filling the plastic bag with food and rushed her upstairs with a tilt of his head.

He could hear her banging around on the floor above his head and then she was taking two at a time back down while he stood anxious at the foot of the stairs. She had on jeans and two shirts but no shoes. 

“That ain’t gonna work, girl,” he said, pointing at her bare feet with the crossbow. 

“I don’t know what happened to my boots, Daryl!” she sounded hysterical, out of breath from pulling her own clothing back on.

“S’okay, s’okay. We’ll find something. Let’s go, though. Right now.” 

Back outside he ran to the hose and cut a six foot length with his knife. He called to her, “Back that car down here, up against that one.” 

They began the process of siphoning the gas from the funeral car into the other. He stepped back, blowing the air out of his lungs, spitting the gasoline in his mouth onto the ground. He could hear the fuel moving from one vehicle to the other. That was good, a relief. Inside his head he began counting seconds, doing the math for a rough approximation of how many gallons they were getting. Then he glanced at the far end of the house and narrowed his eyes. There was a burn barrel on a patch of concrete. 

“Stay here,” he told her and took off at a run. His hunch was right, Beth’s cowboy boots and assorted paraphernalia was in the barrel. He pulled out the boots, her belt, and then there at the bottom was the paper journal. He reached in far and heard her yelling frantically for him. He looked up, a small herd of Walkers was coming around the edge of the cemetery headed their way. He grabbed the journal and shoved it into his back pocket, the rest of her belongings under his arm and ran back to the car, yelling directions to her. 

She jumped into the car, slamming the door shut. He threw himself into the driver’s seat, shoving his armful of things at her. He was waiting as long as he could for the last of the gasoline, but he didn’t want the Walkers in front of the car, and he punched it. Up the driveway, squealing around the corner onto the street and then the road opened up in front of them and he whooped, rolling down his window and flipping the bird back to the dead and the undead.


	4. Chapter 4

Five minutes, ten minutes. From the corners of his eyes, he could see her, frighteningly still, wedged up against the car door but with the side of her hand pressed to the outside of his leg. He clocked the mirrors, swiveled his head to check the woods on either side, looking far down the ruined highway and then he coasted to a stop. He threw the car into neutral and climbed out to close the gas cap. He shouldn’t have been so hasty and abandoned the hose. He scowled at himself and took a deep breath watching the blonde head through the rear window. 

He had told her he wasn’t scared of nothin’. But that wasn’t entirely true. He steeled himself and walked back to her side of the car. He squatted down beside her, inside the opened door, his hands confused and sweaty on his thighs. She turned her head and looked at him out of her sad blue eyes. 

“Beth?”

She nodded and shook her head simultaneously.

With no warning to him, she reached up and put her hands on either side of his neck, pulling his face to her and scooting in between his open knees. She rolled her forehead against his and a long breath shuddered out of her. 

“You wanta cry? Cuz it’s okay. I’m sayin’ it’s alright,” he whispered this softly to keep his voice from breaking. He could feel the strength in her fingers, her thumbs ghosting the edges of his jaw, and realized she wasn’t going to let go any time soon. He knew he was crap at comforting people and he could feel the sweat beading on the back of his neck, threatening to run a cold accusatory line down the long length of his spine. Slowly he reached up for her, his hands on her hips, she was so thin, then sliding around her back, and this was the invitation she needed because she pushed her way completely into his arms and he went down heavy on his backside, a lapful of weeping girl. She curled herself tight against him, and he pulled her fast and hard protectively to his chest and it felt alright. They sat on the asphalt, in the early morning light, for long minutes until her sobs became hiccups, then she quieted and sniffed and he felt one of her hands go up to the back of his head and he let her pull his face down into her shoulder. 

Finally, he urged her to her feet and pressed her back into the car seat. “Are you okay? I mean," he winced, hesitating, "are you hurt?” 

She closed her eyes and then turned her head to look out the windscreen. “He didn’t. I mean, I’m not. You know. It wasn’t about that. I don’t think.”

Daryl nodded, chewing at the corner of his lip. “That’s good.”

“He was lonely, Daryl. So lonely.”

He grunted. “Loneliness make him chain you up to a bed. Make you wear them clothes?”

“And he was crazy. His loneliness turned him crazy, I think. He thought I was his wife.”

He knew she hadn’t driven her knife into a living man's guts because he was mistaking her for his wife, but he didn’t know if she needed reminding about that. The world had gone crazy, from loneliness and sickness and living in the waking nightmare populated by the worst of monsters. Just twenty-four hours before he’d watched a man get kicked to death for lying, and now here was another man disemboweled for losing his mind. 

“He wouldn’t let me go. I told him I had to find you. Told him you were _my_ family and I had to get back to you. That’s when he chained me up.”

They both heard the Walkers at the same time. She slid all the way back into the car and he slammed the door, sprinting around the front and climbing back in. He threw it into drive and they dusted the small group that stumbled up onto the road behind them.

“I’m so tired,” she said and laid her body down on the seat, her head on his thigh. 

“Sleep. I know where we’re headed.”

It was long minutes before he knew she was asleep and even longer minutes until he convinced himself it was okay to rest his hand on her shoulder while he drove. He could feel her hot breath through the thick fabric of his pants and he gave himself permission to allow the heat of it into his bloodstream, carry it up to his heart and warm each chamber that was beating out her name. 

***

At the crossroads where he’d given up, he slowed the car to a stop. He sucked on the side of his thumb. Terminus meant the end of the line and that didn’t sit right with him. He was tired, almost to death, of people. He knew now, for a fact, that the only good person in the world was sleeping nearly in his lap. He looked down the railroad tracks with a narrowed gaze, then he turned the car away and began driving in the opposite direction. He was going to return to the beginning of things, to the origin.


	5. Chapter 5

By mid-morning he knew the gasoline was beginning to be an issue and he could feel that one of the front tires was not going to last much longer. But he also knew he wasn’t halfway to where he wanted to be. He began looking at signage, ruined and warped and faded over the past few years. As he began to slow the car and methodically search the edges of the roadway, she woke. 

She pressed her head against his belly as she maneuvered out from beneath the steering wheel and out of nowhere came a memory of a leering Merle telling him in graphic detail about using the steering wheel in his old box Chevy to trap a women’s head just there as he barreled drunkenly down a country highway. Daryl breathed out heavy and turned to look at her, needing to banish memory and dark thought. Not that the thought of Beth with her head in his lap was all that dark anymore, but the thought of him using a will to power over her was as black as a thought could be and that was something he needed to push out of his mind. 

She was wiping at her mouth with the side of her hand. He could see her lips were chapped. But somewhere along the way she had washed her face.

“Water in the back,” he told her.

And she went up on her knees, leaning over the bench seat and fishing around in the black hefty bag and his pack. All he could see was the long curve of her back, the shape of her hip, and her thigh almost touching his arm. He rolled his eyes at himself and wondered why this new found awareness of her body was surfacing. 

She turned and sat cross-legged, closer to him than to the door. She drank some water and offered him the bottle, then set it at the juncture of her thighs and he literally had to tell his primitive brain to step the fuck off. 

“I need a hairbrush.”

That helped. He laughed. “Ain’t never owned one of them. A comb?”

“Yes!”

“Don’t got one.” He tipped his head and looked at himself in the rear view. “Sorry.”

She pushed his shoulder with her own. She began smoothing her hair back with her palms and fingering out the tangles. “What are you looking for?”

“Mmmmm. Gasoline. A new tire, maybe.”

“There’s a jack and an iron in the trunk. No spare, though.”

He nodded, impressed. Then he saw the sign, one of a dozen or so on a group sign in front of a large cyclone yard and several low metal buildings. He bit his lower lip. And steered the car off the highway, through the ditch, back up the other side and onto the frontage road, doubling back. 

“What’dja see?”

“Not sure yet. Keep an eye out for Walkers.”

She began rifling through the pile of things he had rescued from the unlit burn barrel, pulling on socks and her boots, strapping her knife belt back around her waist. He pulled the car slow off the road and onto the gravel of the industrial yard, cruising past each door in the low-slung building. Finally he parked and keyed off the engine. He cast quick glances in front and behind, then opened the door. 

In the trunk he retrieved the tire iron and he and Beth began prying doors open. On the third door the unforgiving lines of the world softened and he stood looking into the dim interior of the garage. He wondered, for the briefest of moments, if the feeling welling up inside his body was akin to a religious experience. He was overcome with gratitude. And the gratitude came hand in hand with a feeling of hope.

He turned to her, she was beside him now, her back to the discovery, facing the door they had just jimmied. She responded to the expression on his face with a slow building smile that became a small joy.

“This is good,” he said. “This is fucken unbelievable.”

He turned back to the door and pulled it brokenly shut. It was a chore and he knew no undead could pull it back open. Then he impulsively reached for her hand and led her deeper into the building. A vintage Toyota LandCruiser was centerstage. Lifted with military axels and enormous mud tires. All flat on their massive treads. He walked around the vehicle, pulling her with him gently. He was reverent. 

He reached up and opened the doors on the tailgate and whistled low. The back of the cruiser was packed. A generator and stacked metal boxes, a few rubber tubs, tarps, a cooler, a water cooler, and on both rear windows were loaded gun racks. He swung himself up into the back, crouching beneath the hard top and running his hands over the supplies. He jumped back down and opened the driver door, hoisting himself up and continuing the exploration. Finally, he sat looking forward and bent over the steering wheel, hands hanging loosely on the column. He thought he might be hyperventilating. 

Fuck it, he thought to himself. Beth, and now this. He squeezed his eyes shut and muttered his own form of prayer under his breath. 

He leaped back out and found Beth rummaging through boxes and shelves. She was piling things on the concrete floor. She turned and looked at him as he walked up beside her. 

“Daryl!” 

He nodded, a wide grin splitting his face. “I know. What are you finding?”

“Freeze dried foods. There’s water.” She pointed at a metal shelf lined with blue buckets. 

He looked past that and sucked in his breath, walking over to another shelf. He reached out a slightly shaking hand to run his fingers along the edge of a sealed wooden crate. “This is all ammo.” 

“What is this place?” she asked.

“Someone who was ready for this,” he waved vaguely around them, “end of the world. You know. A survivalist.”

“But it’s all still here,” she whispered.

“Yeah. Guess he didn’t make it back in time.”

“We’re the lucky ones, huh?”

He shrugged. Most days he would have argued with that, but in that moment he felt like the luckiest man on earth. He turned back to her, smiling, then laughing softly, and then she was laughing with him and he opened his arms and scooped her up, swinging her around, holding on tight, for all he was worth. 

They began to work diligently. She was taking stock of everything in the garage. He was working on the Toyota, having to pause every few minutes and shake his head at how prepared their survivalist had been. On-board air, generator, marine battery with a spare in the back. He aired the tires. Checked the fluids. The tank was full and there were four old-style red gas cans harnessed in holders off the back. All full and smelling unspoiled. There was a roof rack and he began hauling up the boxes and water that Beth was separating out for him and tying the supplies down. He heard her gasp and he looked up quickly. She was holding up an armful of MRE’s and he jumped back down to the floor. 

She snapped out an army blanket for an impromptu picnic. He sat down cross-legged and she curled herself across from him, all feminine bending to her knees, heels drawn up beneath her. She was opening packets, and setting out food. He could not help but watch the long graceful curve of her neck, the small perfectly formed ears, with the gorgeous white-blonde hair tucked behind. She smiled at him and then leaned forward on both hands. “This, Daryl Dixon, is like getting something from Santa Claus.”

They ate and drank bellyfuls of the stored water. She was cataloguing her finds to him and they were deciding together what to pack. 

“We need to get moving,” he said. “I know we didn’t see no Walkers but we could get trapped, easy, here.” 

She nodded.

He took a deep breath and she looked up sharply, paying close attention to him, folding her hands into her lap, listening. “I been thinkin’ about this for a few days now. And I figured out that I weren’t thinkin’ right about,” he paused, “all of this before. Sure, it’s been a crazy few years and we’ve all been scramblin’. But that parts behind us now. The prison, your daddy’s farm,” he hesitated, “family. What we got, Beth, is one another. That’s it. For certain sure. And we’re here now, but I gotta get outta here, away from all this. And so do you. You belong with me.” He tossed his head and obscured his eyes with the long shaggy fringe. “If you want to, I mean, you know. I can take care of you.”

“I want to. And I can take care of you,” she said so softly that he wondered if she had spoken at all, but the inside of his ribcage was echoing with the sound of her voice.

He agreed. “Good, that’s good. I know you believe in good people and that’s okay for you. But I seen more bad in people the past few years then I seen in my whole life before all this and I saw some pretty bad people before. So, I ain’t about to talk you out of your opinion, but I’m gonna start actin’ different because of mine. We’re gonna get out of here.” He held up a hand. “Hold up. I’m not sayin’ forever, and I’m not sayin’ we give up on our people. But we gotta find a spot of peace for a while. So we can breathe. Lots of things have changed, but some things are still the same. As they ever been. People have been living off the land since the time of cavemen. We, you and me, can go back to that. We can do that. If we got one another, ya see?”

She was smiling, it was a slow secret that she was sharing with him and only him. “Like Adam and Eve.”


End file.
